Category: Pennsylvania News

A newly filed lawsuit alleges that the deadly explosion at a Bucks County nursing home just before Christmas was the result of negligence on the part of the facility’s operator and its natural gas supplier.

Filed by Philadelphia law firm Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky on behalf of four survivors of the explosion, the lawsuit claims that Saber Healthcare Group, Peco, and others failed to appropriately respond to and treat a gas leak at Bristol Health & Rehab Center, and neglected to evacuate the building.

The resulting explosion, which devastated the facility the afternoon of Dec. 23, killed two people and injured about 20 others.

“Our pre-suit investigation left no doubt that the defendants were responsible for this foreseeable and preventable tragedy just before Christmas,” said lead attorney Robert J. Mongeluzzi.

In addition to Peco and Saber Healthcare Group, the lawsuit names Exelon, Saber Healthcare Holdings, and the nursing home as defendants.

The plaintiffs were among those on site at the time of the blast, the lawsuit says. They include former nursing home resident Barbara Stall, a paraplegic whose motorized wheelchair was allegedly destroyed during the incident, as well as facility aides Stacy Ballard and Davidetta Blay, and telecom contractor James Broderick. Blay and Broderick’s spouses are also included as plaintiffs.

“Each continues to receive medical treatment for the physical and emotional injuries,” the law firm said in a statement. The lawsuit, the firm added, is believed to be the first filed to allege negligence.

The blast rocked the Bristol facility just after 2 p.m., coming after Peco crews responded to reports of a gas odor earlier in the day, according to Inquirer reports. Some residents, The Inquirer later reported, had been smelling gas in the 174-bed facility in the days leading up to the explosion, but none were told to evacuate.

The complaint, filed Monday in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, alleges that despite the gas odor, the defendants did not take steps to evacuate, which it calls a “reckless and outrageous” decision.

The odor, the complaint alleges, began permeating the building at least a half-hour before the explosion, and the defendants treated the situation with “carelessness, negligence, gross negligence, recklessness, and outrageous conduct,” the complaint said.

Peco and Exelon, the lawsuit claims, never tested a gas pipeline that fed the nursing home for leaks and failed to properly diagnose and fix the leak once on site. Exelon, the parent corporation of Peco, declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation.

Zachary Shamberg, Saber’s chief of government affairs, declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

The age and condition of the gas line running to the nursing home remain unclear, but Peco has said that it has about 742 miles of substandard gas lines across the state that need to be replaced — accounting for roughly 5% of its gas service, but 82% of leaks, according to a report from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.

The company’s plans, The Inquirer previously reported, call for all those lines to be replaced by 2035.

As a result of the explosion, the complaint alleges that the plaintiffs were forced to “suffer catastrophic personal injuries, had to survive harrowing rescue attempts, and watch their friends and colleagues lose their lives and similarly suffered traumatic injuries.”

The cause of the explosion is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, which said it expects to release a preliminary report on the explosion roughly three weeks from now. Previously, the board said investigators would test the natural gas service line that runs from the street to the basement of the facility, would interview witnesses, and would gather records.

In the wake of the blast, Saber has relocated roughly 120 residents to local hospitals and other assisted-living facilities. The company said it was evaluating its evacuation procedures.

Muthoni Nduthu, a 52-year-old nurse at the facility and mother to three sons, was killed in the blast. The second person killed was a resident at the nursing home, but they have not yet been publicly identified.

“This explosion, and the loss of life and horrific injuries that accompanied it, were the tragic results of Defendants’ failure to timely respond to the gas leak, appropriately treat the leak, and evacuate the building in response to the leak,” the complaint alleges.

The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages to be determined by a jury.

Bucks County has agreed to pay $950,000 to a woman with a serious mental illness who was pepper-sprayed and left strapped for hours in a chair while at Bucks County Correctional Facility over five years ago.

Kimberly Stringer’s parents hope the settlement draws attention to the country’s ongoing mental health crisis, and the need for alternatives to arresting and jailing people who need psychiatric care.

Martha and Paul Stringer of Lower Makefield Township sued Bucks County prison guards and officials in 2022, asserting that their daughter’s civil rights were violated while she was jailed for 64 days during the spring and summer of 2020.

Martha Stringer has since become an advocate for programs to keep people with serious mental illnesses out of jails. She said that, along with the settlement, the county agreed to work to implement one such program. Known as assisted outpatient treatment, it involves regular court appearances and close supervision for people with a history of hospitalizations who struggle to follow treatment plans.

“My only hope would be that this story resonates beyond Bucks County,” because county jails all around the country are frequently where people with mental health issues end up, she said.

By April 2020, her 27-year old daughter already had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features and had been involuntarily committed twice, Martha Stringer said.

“She was well known, particularly in Falls Township, where she was arrested,” Martha Stringer said.

It was then, while in the midst of a rapidly worsening mental health crisis, that Kimberly Stringer struck and threatened her neighbor, according to the Stringers’ attorney, David Inscho. She was arrested and taken to Bucks County Correctional Facility, where, as a pretrial detainee, she was pepper-sprayed twice by prison guards, Inscho said.

Stringer was also placed in a “restraint chair,” which prohibits movement, several times, for as long as four hours, Inscho said. At no point did she pose a threat to guards, and her inability to comply with orders was because she was “in a state of catatonia.”

“In that state she was not able to process and comply with the rules of that correctional facility — and that led to uses of force” by prison guards, Inscho said.

The settlement agreement between the Stringers and Bucks County, which was reached Dec. 17, includes a requirement that video footage of the incidents recorded by prison guards be destroyed. The agreement notes one remaining copy of the videos may be kept in a password-protected file for 10 years and then deleted.

“The videos were difficult to watch,” Inscho said. “It was clear that Kim was in a mental health crisis. The tools available to the guards were clearly not the tools Kim needed.”

Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia said she believes prison guards were trying to keep Stringer safe, but she shouldn’t have been in jail to begin with.

“She and the millions of Americans who likewise struggle with mental illness deserve access to high-quality, intensive treatment, with intervention that begins long before they are misdirected to the criminal justice system,” Ellis-Marseglia said in a statement.

Ellis-Marseglia said that Bucks County has made strides in helping people with serious mental illness. In 2023, the board of commissioners voted unanimously to fund a behavioral health center in Doylestown, the Lenape Valley Foundation’s Bright Path Center, Ellis-Marseglia noted. Last August, commissioners voted to add $5 million more to fund the facility, a county spokesperson said.

Bucks County in 2023 also voted to build a Diversion Assessment Restoration and Treatment Center at the jail, which is set to open this year, the spokesperson said, and in 2021, it added a separate housing area for women and a mental health unit in the jail.

“These programs and facilities will help bridge critical gaps in mental health services and move us in the direction of improving the mental health treatment environment,” Ellis-Marseglia said.

The Stringers applauded these changes, which they attributed in part to the public outcry over their daughter’s mistreatment. Their daughter’s story became public after several inmates notified the media of Kimberly Stringer’s condition in jail; days later, the county relocated her to a state mental institution.

Still, Martha Stringer said, most of Bucks County’s new interventions are for people who have already been arrested.

“And that’s where we’re going to come to the table with Bucks, to see if we can implement assisted outpatient treatment,” Martha Stringer said.

The money from the settlement will go into a special needs trust that the parents set up years ago, Paul Stringer said. The trust has strict rules on what money can be spent on, and is designed to provide for their daughter even after he and his wife, both in their 60s, have died.

“She’s doing quite well,” Paul Stringer said. “But she requires, probably, a lifetime of supports.”

Their now-33-year-old daughter is living in Brooke Glen Behavioral Hospital under a long-term involuntary commitment, Martha Stringer said. Their hope is that she’ll be able to move to a less-restrictive setting and gain more independence, while still getting the support she needs.

“These past five years, she’s missed a lot,” Martha Stringer said. “She’s missed her sister’s wedding. Recently she’s become an aunt. She’s missed a lot. We struggled with that.”

One thing that’s given some comfort, she added, is that people often reach out for advice on how they can help their children, who are in similar situations.

“I learned so much the hard way, that I felt like, if I could give families a better understanding of what we learned, then I could help them.”